Kibwanga Mwenze

Mwenze Kibwanga was a Congolese painter, born in Kilumba in 1925 and died in Lubumbashi in 1999. In 1950 he was admitted to the Academy of Indigenous Popular Art in Lubumbashi. When the founder of this Academy, Pierre-Romain Desfossés, died in 1954, Kibwanga Mwenze was welcomed into the Elizabethville Academy of Fine Arts, led by the Belgian artist Laurent Moonens (1911-1991). He later became a professor there until his retirement. The subjects he dealt with were mainly genre scenes, village life, dance scenes, religious scenes and local fauna and flora. The human figure is ubiquitous in his scenes of everyday life. Until 1952 he painted with his thumb. His unique style is reminiscent of Divisionism. He creates alternating lines of two similar colors, shaded with white, reminiscent of the turns of the loom. This gives his work a certain flexibility. He exhibited in Kinshasa, at the Academy of Fine Arts and in the National Museum. In 1958 he exhibited at the International Exhibition in Brussels, in 1974 he took part in the Lausanne fair and in 1975 in the Avant-garde exhibitions in Paris. Retrospective exhibition was held in 2007 at the Lelo Lobie Center Wallonia-Brussels in Paris/France. We find his work in the collection of the Africa Museum in Tervuren and also in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (BT)